Page:George Eliot and Judaism.djvu/88

so many Jews of being unwilling to discuss the forms and ceremonials of their religion in the presence of Christians. When Mordecai, at the desire of Deronda, quits his old abode and prepares to set up house along with his sister Mirah, the grandmother of little Jacob Cohen—who is, by the way, a great favourite with the authoress—remarks, "'Well, I hope there'll be nothing in the way of your getting kosher meat, Mordecai.' 'That's all right, that's all right,' replied Cohen, as if anxious to cut off inquiry on matters in which he was uncertain of the guest's [Deronda's] position." While all the world is satisfied that avarice is congenital among the Jews, and their special inheritance rather than the inheritance of all mankind, George Eliot expresses a very different opinion. She says of Ezra Cohen: "He was not clad in the sublime pathos of the martyr, and his taste for money-getting